It's my hobby. Don't judge.

Crazy doings in the Art Tournament brackets this week!  But since, in the Venn diagram of IAT readers, the circles for "people interested in the art" and "people interested in the bracket machinations" are not co-...  co-...  Crap.  What's the word I'm looking for here, Morgan?

Anyway, the point is: this is a separate post to explain what's going on in the brackets to those few people who could give a damn.  Hi, guys!


OK: First, Dou/Dove was a tie, the sixth First Round tie in the Tournament.  That's easily dealt with: Dou and Dove are off to the holding pen of artists who will be the victims, or the anticlimaxes, for the artists who have survived the carnage of the Play-In Tournament.

Secondly, Dubuffet beat Duccio.  That match moves up one slot in the brackets, and Dubuffet will play his Second Round contest as the "top" artist instead of the "bottom" artist.  But whom does he play against?

Thirdly -- and this is where it gets a little crazy -- we find that the NEXT most recent First Round contest, DuChamp/Dufy is also a tie.  This sends us scrambling to the rule book, because the holding pen for the Play-In artists is now full up.  Here's what we find in the Rules Section II.3 ("Handling Ties") Paragraph 4:

The first artist from the seventh First-Round tie will be held in suspension.  The first artist from the second tie will then compete against the second artist from the first tie; the first artist from the third tie will compete against the second artist from the second tie, and so on, in a simple offsetting process.  These tiebreak games will occupy the same spot in the brackets as the play-in games -- the first of the four matches in a bracket cluster of eight -- and will be played no sooner than three months after the discovery of the most recent tie involved.  The exception will be a contest between the second artist of the last tie and the artist brought back from suspension; this will be the last First Round contest of the entire tournament.  If that's a tie, it will be resolved by removing my personal vote.

Well, the wording there is a little dodgy, as the "seventh" tie transmutes into the "first" tie between the first two sentences.  But the upshot is:

a. Marcel DuChamp will be the artist held in suspension until "the last First Round contest of the entire tournament."  It kind of kills me that this had to happen to somebody as major-league and as interesting as DuChamp, but when I confessed the situation to Mrs.5000 she pointed out that he of all artists would probably LOVE being in such an absurd situation, and that makes me feel better.

b. Dufy enters a freshly-built holding pen (maybe it's more dignified to think of these as "locker rooms," or "green rooms") of artists who have tied in the First Round and are waiting for their second outing.  He'll have another go at the top of a bracket-of-eight at least three months after the NEXT First Round tie is discovered.  EVERYTHING IS UNDER CONTROL. 

c. We still don't have anybody for Dubuffet to square off against.  So,

Fourthly, Dürer beat Van Dyck.  Phew.  They started February 9th, so although it had a short run as First-Rounders go, that match was well over the minimum month.  It gets yoicked up two bracket slots, and we end up with a Dubuffet/Dürer pairing as the last match on the now-finalized second of the eight initial brackets.  (Looking ahead, the probable implication is that instead of both romping easily into Round Four, Dürer and Donatello will get thrust into a heartbreak Third Round Thriller.  But that's just guessing)  Much later update: So it came to pass.

Wow!